More Monday Male Beauty

 

Republicans Face a Choice: the U.S. Constitution or Trump and Sedition

If the House of Representatives votes to impeach Donald Trump a second time on Wednesday for inciting insurrection as seems likely to occur, Republicans in both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate will have a choice: uphold the constitution and vote to impeach or side with Trump and an attempted coup. Despite whatever bloviating some of them might attempt to engage in, those are the only choices at hand. As for those Republicans too afraid of their neo-Nazi and white supremacist constituents to do the right thing and vote for impeachment as suggested by GOP congressman Peter Meijer in a column in The Detroit News, the other option is to resign their office.  If they will not uphold their oaths of office they have no place in Congress and, worse yet, if they vote against impeachment, they become complicit in Trump's attempted coup. (The members of the sedition caucus in the House and Senate are already complicit and deserve to be branded as such by history).  A column in the Washington Post looks at this reality.  Here are column excerpts: 

Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) and NBC’s Chuck Todd had this exchange on “Meet the Press” on Sunday about the consequences Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) should face for fomenting the deadly mob that breached the Capitol last week:

TOOMEY: Look, I think the — they’re going to have a lot of soul searching to do. And the problem is they were complicit in the big lie, this lie that Donald Trump won the election in a landslide and it was all stolen. They compounded that with this notion that, somehow, this could all be reversed in the final moments of the congressional proceedings. So that’s going to be, that’s going to haunt them for a very long time. 

Toomey was elected. He has the constitutional obligations to try to remove a president who subverts democracy. He has an obligation under the Constitution to, in appropriate circumstances, expel members by a two-thirds vote. He cannot shirk his duties as he did in acquitting Trump the first time. Why have impeachment and expulsion in the Constitution if the answer is: “Let the voters decide"? For goodness’ sake, he is not even running for reelection in 2022. I find it unfathomable that he remains so timid.

It is this sort of weakness — the failure to repudiate Trump years ago; the refusal to dump him in 2020; the silence, if not active support to overthrow the election — that defines the “good” Republicans. Not good enough. Inaction is complicity. Inaction allows Trump and lawmakers to escape accountability for their heinous actions.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) took a stab at explaining Republicans’ moral weakness: He suggested on ABC’s “This Week” that “when it comes to members of Congress, they’re fearful of the reelection, they’re fearful for their safety. I mean, the number of death threats that have been thrown against people like me and, frankly, every member of Congress.” The former Air Force pilot added that “if you’re going to be fearful — just my humble opinion — if you’re going to be fearful in this job, it might not be right job for you at this moment in time.”

Another Republican, Sarah Isgur, a former spokeswoman for the Justice Department under Trump, explained on “This Week” how Republican senators such as Hawley and Cruz were clearly responsible for the monstrous events at the Capitol. “The senators knew better.

“Their stated objective was to undermine our democratic electoral process. That’s what’s unacceptable right at the beginning.” If only Republicans who knew this was wrong would show an ounce of courage, they could dispel the notion that the GOP is a party of authoritarian thugs, charlatans and cowards. But that would require actually doing something about [Trump] Cruz and Hawley.

Let’s turn to Vice President Pence. . . . has an obligation to act. Section 4 of the 25th Amendment provides, “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.” Does Pence truly believe that a president who incited a riot, dragged his feet to delay telling mobs to leave the Capitol and then sent his “love” to his “very special” seditionists is able to discharge the duties of the office?

Pence needs to perform his obligations. If necessary, he should publicly call on the Cabinet to provide the votes (eight of 15) needed to temporarily remove Trump. (Better yet, he can avoid the Cabinet and ask Congress to set up “such other body as Congress may by law provide.”) Why does he not act? Fear.

Few elected Republicans apparently have the nerve to perform their duties, if it involves annoying a president or their malicious colleagues, even when the offense is as great as Trump’s. When Republican colleagues, as Toomey admits, were “complicit in the big lie,” all they can do is shrug. Even when they can tell right from wrong and truth from wacko conspiracy theory, they lack the spine to do anything about it. In that case, Kinzinger is right: They have no business holding office.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

 

Why a Second Impeachment is Necessary

Some argue that with Donald Trump's term in office about to expire there is no need to seek a second impeachment to remove him from office. Others fear that a second impeachment may further inflame his extremist supporters and lead to more violence, something I believe will occur whether a second impeachment is sought or not. But if a second impeachment is not sought and hopefully successful, Trump will go unpunished yet again, something that over the last four years has only served to further embolden him. With each unpunished outrage Trump has moved on to something even worse culminating in the sacking of the U.S. Capitol last week. In addition, it is now necessary to force Senate Republicans to be forced to take a side and their action documented for history.  They can either stand for the Constitution and the rule of law or they can side with sedition. Only impeachment will force this to occur.  Moreover, if convicted by the Senate, Trump could be barred from ever holding any federal office in the future, something that would truly allow the nation to move on.  An op-ed in the New York Times makes this case.  Here are highlights:

Since his resounding defeat in the presidential election in November, Donald Trump has done everything but concede to the democratic will of the American people. He unleashed an avalanche of lies and baseless claims of fraud — conspiracy theories that filled his supporters with a delusional belief that the election had been stolen from him. He filed a bevy of absurd lawsuits. He attempted to cajole and intimidate officials at all levels of government into subverting the election and keeping him in office. And then, running out of recourse, legitimate and illegitimate, he incited an insurrection against the government and the Constitution that he swore to uphold.

The attempted coup at the United States Capitol last Wednesday, which took place as lawmakers inside counted the electoral votes that would formalize Joe Biden’s overwhelming election by the American people, marks one of the lowest points in our country’s 245-year experiment in democracy.

From Andrew Jackson to Richard Nixon, we have seen presidents abuse their power, but we had never witnessed an American president incite a violent mob on the citadel of our democracy in a desperate attempt to cling to power.

We cannot let this go unanswered. With each day, Mr. Trump grows more and more desperate. We should not allow him to menace the security of our country for a second longer.

[M]y co-authors — Representatives Ted Lieu and Jamie Raskin — and I will introduce an article of impeachment to remove Mr. Trump from office for incitement of insurrection.

As lawmakers who have impeached this president once before, we do not take this responsibility lightly. In fact, it was not our first choice of action. In the midst of last Wednesday’s siege, we were among those that asked Vice President Mike Pence to convene the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to quickly remove Mr. Trump from office. We have called on the president to resign.

[I]t is clear that neither of those possibilities will be realized. So it is Congress’s responsibility to act.

The American people witnessed Mr. Trump’s actions for themselves. We all saw his speech on Jan. 6. We watched his fanatics storm the Capitol at his request. Five people died, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer and four of the president’s supporters. We fear what Mr. Trump may do with his remaining time in office.

That is why we believe the article of impeachment should be voted on as soon as possible. It is true that even after we act, Senator Mitch McConnell may, as he did one year ago, try to prevent a conviction in the U.S. Senate. It is also true that a trial might extend into the first days of the Biden administration.

Some argue that another impeachment trial would further divide our country and further inflame Trump supporters. But the truth is that we do not have a choice. This impeachment charge is meant to defend the integrity of the republic. Both Democratic and Republican members of Congress must attend to the duties of their oath. Failing to act would set an irresponsibly dangerous precedent for future presidents who are about to leave office.

Further, there can be no healing of the divisions in our country without justice for the man most responsible for this horrific insurrection. The president must be held accountable. That can happen only by impeaching him for a second time and convicting him in the Senate. A conviction that would allow Congress to prohibit him from ever serving in federal office again.

What happened last Wednesday was an abomination. There is no question about that. There is also no question that Mr. Trump becomes more of a threat to public safety by the moment.

The only question now is what Congress will do about it.

Final Sunday Male Beauty

 

For Moral Republicans It’s Time to Exit the GOP

Over the last four years or more I have argued that one cannot be a decent and moral person and be member of Trump's Republican Party.  The two are mutually exclusive and to my Republican friends who seem to care only about lower taxes, is the desire for lower taxes sufficient to justify throwing morality down the toilet?  This holds particularly true for Republicans who are practicing Christians trying to be true to Christ's message - which exclude evangelicals - while voting for a party that now stands for open white supremacy, fascism, and hatred of others. Stop the hypocrisy of going to church if you are going to support the Republican Party, the party that literally put children in cages.  After the sacking of the U.S. Capitol by members of Trump's base - which is the base of today's GOP - moral Republicans who have heretofore tried to look the other way should be fleeing to exit the GOP.  A column in the Washington Post by a former Republican makes this case.  Here are highlights:

Readers know that for a couple of years, I have argued that the Republican Party failed the test of character and decency when it embraced President Trump and, therefore, should be leveled. The insurrection this past week highlights how essential it is to leave a party that is now thoroughly infested with neo-Nazi, racist, anti-Semitic and lawless elements.

It is no surprise that several Republican state elected officials have been identified as having participated in Wednesday’s riot. The Associated Press reports: “[West Virginia] State Del. Derrick Evans was among lawmakers from at least seven states who traveled to Washington, D.C., for demonstrations rooted in the baseless conspiracy theory that Democrat Joe Biden stole the presidential election.

The involvement of so many elected Republicans not simply in perpetuating the lie of a stolen election but in participating in a deadly event in which anti-Semitic, pro-Confederate thugs roamed the halls of Congress is horrifying, but predictable. The rioters on Capitol Hill — even before committing a slew of crimes — were decked in neo-Nazi/ and racist regalia. They refused to allow democracy to take its course. This was the band elected officials joined or supported.

Robert P. Jones, head of the Public Religion Research Institute, writes:

There were crosses, “Jesus Saves” signs and “Jesus 2020” flags that mimicked the design of the Trump flags. . . . Comfortably intermingled with Christian rhetoric and these Christian icons were explicit symbols of white supremacy. . . . . At least one protester sported a “Camp Auschwitz” hoodie, a reference to a concentration camp where over 1 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, even as others made outlandish comparisons between Christians as victims of American society and European Jews in the Third Reich.

This is Trump’s Republican Party. It is also the party for and of evangelical Christians, whose worldview, Jones writes, is intertwined with racism. “This seditious mob was motivated not just by loyalty to Trump, but by an unholy amalgamation of white supremacy and Christianity that has plagued our nation since its inception and is still with us today.

The notion that the Republican Party can be separated from the mob is nonsensical. The mob is the party’s base.

Republicans, including House and Senate members, have a choice: Associate and co-exist with this Republican Party, or leave. When 147 House members object to electoral college votes, it is impossible to excise the threat. The threat is the majority of the House Republicans. The option is to stay or leave.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) should roll out the welcome mat for Murkowski and any other Republicans who can no longer tolerate to be in a party with insurrectionists and those who cheer them on, including Hawley and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). Murkowski hit the nail on the head: A party that harbors those characters is no place for her.

Murkowski, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and others in what we might call the “Sanity Caucus” should applaud the call from Sens. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) for ringleaders Hawley and Cruz to resign.

The party isn’t going to change, so it might be time for some Republicans to head for the exits. They might find a whole lot of familiar faces on the way out.

More Sunday Morning Male Beauty

 

The Consequences of Republican Right-Wing Pandering

Since I left the Republican Party two decades ago - largely because the party had discarded the concept of separation of church and state and embraced Christofascist homophobia - both the party base and Republican elected officials have become more extreme.  This reached a crescendo under the Trump/Pence regime where pandering to neo-Nazis and white supremacist's became acceptable as did rolling back the civil rights of other citizens to pander to Christofascists.  Indeed, in some Republican circles there seemingly was a contest to see who could be the most extreme (Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley were the winners this past week). The consequence of all of this has been the mainstreaming of the most insane conspiracy theories and Trump lies and the rejection of objective fact and scientific knowledge, things once embraced by the GOP of my younger years.  Rather than educate the party base and insist on truth based actions and policies, the norm became embracing every lunatic theory and lie embraced by the party base and, of course, never calling out Donald Trump's endless lies.  Instead most Republicans, especially at the Congressional level repeated the lies.  Combine this with Donald Trump's incitement of the mob last Wednesday and the sacking of the Capitol became almost inevitable.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at this reality:

In a short Senate-floor speech Wednesday night, Mitt Romney declared that President Donald Trump incited insurrection by deliberately misinforming his supporters about the outcome of the 2020 election. “Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate Democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit,” he told his colleagues. “The best way we can show respect for the voters who were upset is by telling them the truth,” he insisted, drawing sustained applause from other senators who were present. “That’s the burden, and the duty, of leadership. The truth is that President-elect Biden won the election.”

His message was lost on the six GOP senators and 121 House Republicans who cast votes objecting to the certification of some electoral votes. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Roger Marshall, John Kennedy, Tommy Tuberville, and others disgraced themselves with their pandering. But the fault goes far beyond elected officials. The right in the United States is rife with influential people who pretend to respect the grass roots even as they disrespect them with lies, glaring omissions, and failures to correct prominent conspiracy theories that they know to be false.

The Fox News host Tucker Carlson, for instance, while condemning political violence last night, implored his viewers to ask why it was happening. His theory is that political violence happens when a population believes that its elections are fraudulent and that democracy is a charade.

Carlson did not mention that Trump lied to his supporters before and after the 2020 election, telling them premeditated falsehoods calculated to make them regard it as fraudulent. That is a hugely important part of the story, and Carlson must know that no frank accounting of the day can elide it. The leader of their country didn’t tell them to shut up. He told them that he won the election in a landslide and that they needed to fight against a “steal.”

Or consider the strikingly vague statement that the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank, released on Twitter after the storming of the Capitol. “As we published in May when violent protests erupted, so we write again,” the tweet declared, “America must have a full accounting of how today’s riots happened, who made them happen, and who let them happen. Those in power must be held to account.” But the most responsible party is already known. Again, Trump told many lies about the election to his supporters, urged them to come to Washington on the pretext that his lies were true, spoke to them Wednesday morning, and urged them to go over to the Capitol building, where, in his false telling, members of Congress were stealing democracy from the people.

At The Federalist, in an article doling out blame for what happened at the Capitol, Ben Domenech indicted the left for its treatment of the Tea Party and Romney, the iconoclasm of Black Lives Matter, the unpreparedness of the Capitol Police, and more. . . . That does not follow––one should give a full accounting of Trump’s role in the storming of the Capitol whether or not the “attitude” of insurrection will remain after he’s gone. Trump’s role, besides, far exceeds merely egging people on to march to the Capitol. Trump and his allies spent years telling followers blatant falsehoods directly relevant to the false belief that the election was stolen from him.

In an instructive contrast, the writers at National Review, who have plenty of complaints about the left, gave full and frank assessments of Trump’s misdeeds.

Here is Kevin D. Williamson a day before the storming of the Capitol:

It is no great surprise to find President Donald Trump and cronies complaining about election fraud even as President Donald Trump and his cronies were recorded in a telephone call attempting to suborn election fraud, threatening the Georgia secretary of state—a Republican, note—with criminal prosecution unless he should “find,” discovering by some black art, enough votes to swing the state’s election Trump’s way...I have on many occasions criticized the abuse of the word coup in our politics, but that is what this is: an attempted coup d’état under color of law. It would be entirely appropriate today to impeach Trump a second time and remove him from office before his term ends.

Here is Michael Brendan Dougherty on the day the Capitol was breached:

Trump’s claims of material vote fraud have no merit. He repeatedly and falsely claimed that Vice President Mike Pence could simply reject the electors sent by the states Trump lost and thereby make Trump president. This was a lie, very likely a knowing lie. And a dangerous one.

These are honest efforts to grapple with Trump’s actions. More people on the right need to speak this clearly about what’s going on, and level with their respective audiences. That’s unlikely, however. For years, talk-radio types such as Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin have built their audiences by pandering and omitting hard truths that their audiences don’t want to hear. I expect them to continue that disrespectful practice, even as some of their listeners are taken in by QAnon and its ilk.

The conservative donor class and the grass roots bear some fault in all of this. Both routinely punish conservatives who level with them in a cancel culture as chilling as at any college in America. But telling such hard truths is not just a burden of leadership. It is a burden of any honorable career as a journalist or a broadcaster or the head of a think tank, even a Straussian one.

What ails the populist right today has roots in the pandering grievance-mongering of Sarah Palin, the chalkboard rants of Glenn Beck, the longtime enabling of Rupert Murdoch, the hypocrisy-laden xenophobia of Lou Dobbs, and all of the people who knew better but said nothing, for years, telling themselves there would be no price for bad faith. But the failure to embrace truth-telling abetted Trump in deceiving his most deluded and dangerous supporters. All of America is paying the price.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

 

Trump Evangelicals Are Complicit In Assault on Democracy

The ranks of  Donald Trump's base of support and enablers are filled with liars, grifters and hypocrites.  None, however, deserve more contempt and derision than Trump supporting evangelical Christians (and right wing Catholics) who have supported a man who is the antithesis of everything they claim to stand for.  Trump is the embodiment of the seven deadly sins yet these false Christians gave him fealty simply because he promised he would empower them to persecute others and for exempt them from laws governing the rest of us.  The ranks of the scamvangelists - Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Jerry Falwell, Jr. and a host of others are even more worthy of contempt because they merely lusted for political power and an opportunity to further line their own pockets.  In hold those responsible for the sacking of the U.S. Capitol, evangelicals need to be held accountable as well since many have happily trafficked in Trump's lies and untruths.  Michael Gerson has a column in the Washington Post that looks at this complicity.  Personally, I see little hope of evangelicals reforming themselves since the roots of so many trace directly to white supremacy and a hatred of others.  Here are column excerpts:

The practical effects of the fascist occupation of the U.S. Capitol building were quickly undone. The symbols it left behind are indelible.

A Confederate flag waved in triumph in the halls of a building never taken by Jefferson Davis. Guns drawn to protect the floor of the House of Representatives from violent attack. A cloddish barbarian in the presiding officer’s chair. The desecration of democracy under the banner “Jesus Saves.”

This post-apocalyptic vision of chaos and national humiliation was the direct and intended consequence of a president’s incitement. It was made possible by quislings such as Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who turned a ceremony of continuity into a rallying cry for hatred and treason. In the aftermath, Republican legislators who still don’t support President Trump’s immediate removal from office by constitutional means are guilty of continuing complicity.

The only way to restore boundaries of law and decency is to enforce them.

The coming weeks will see a gradually arriving reckoning. Political leaders who sought access and influence over the past four years through a political alliance with insurrectionists and domestic terrorists are responsible for unleashing insurrectionists and domestic terrorists. This is true of some Federalist Society conservatives, who cared only about judicial appointments. It is true of some economic conservatives, focused only on tax and regulatory policy.

And it is true, above all, of Trump evangelicals, who sought to recover lost social influence through the cynical embrace of corrupt power.

I come back to this group repeatedly, not only because I share an evangelical background and resent those who dishonor it, but because the overwhelming support of evangelicals is the single largest reason that Trump possesses power in the first place. It was their malignant approach to politics that forced our country into its current nightmare. As white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, misogynists, anarchists, criminals and terrorists took hold of the Republican Party, many evangelicals blessed it under the banner “Jesus Saves.”

Jesus had something to say about political deals with the devil: “Get behind me, Satan!” My point is less theological: The political and religious costs of a tight evangelical alliance with violent bigots and crackpots were easily foreseen. I and many others foresaw and foresaw until our fingers ached at the keyboard. Yet Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Jr., Robert Jeffress and the others either shut their eyes or shared in Trumpian hatreds.

“We didn’t vote for him to be our pastor or our husband,” explained Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America [a truly foul organization]. “We voted for him to be our bodyguard.” But what if the bodyguard you hired turns out to be a brutish, bigoted, narcissistic, authoritarian thug who wants to burn down any democratic institution he can’t control? Perhaps the moral character of political bodyguards actually matters. Perhaps evangelicals should not be hiring bodyguards in the first place, but rather supporting moral leaders who seek the common good.

The damage is now done. And it is not my purpose to pick through the ruins of destroyed reputations. It is tempting to call unforgivable the equation of Christian truth with malice, cruelty, deception, bigotry and sedition.

The collapse of one disastrous form of Christian social engagement should be an opportunity for the emergence of a more faithful one. And here there are plenty of potent, hopeful Christian principles lying around unused by most evangelicals: A consistent and comprehensive concern for the weak and vulnerable in our society, including the poor, immigrants and refugees. A passion for racial reconciliation and criminal justice reform, rooted in the nonnegotiable demands of human dignity. A deep commitment to public and global health, reflecting the priorities of Christ’s healing ministry. An embrace of political civility as a civilizing norm. A commitment to the liberty of other people’s religions, not just our own. An insistence on public honesty and a belief in the transforming power of unarmed truth.

What would America be like if these had been the priorities of evangelical Christians over the past four years — or over the past four decades? It would mean something very different, in that world, to raise the banner “Jesus Saves.”

Christianity is dying in America among younger generations and no one is more responsible for this than evangelicals and their scamvangelist leaders.